Faculty & Research Archive

Last Friday, President Trump asked the SEC to examine the elimination of quarterly financial reports. The President mentioned an executive (apparently Indra Nooyi, outgoing CEO of PepsiCo (PEP)) who told him that eliminating quarterly reporting will enhance executives’ long-term orientation, thereby increasing investments and jobs. A panacea. I believe terminating quarterly reports is the right move, but for the wrong reasons.

Last week, President Donald Trump suggested in a tweet that companies could report results every six months instead of quarterly. "That would allow greater flexibility & save money. I have asked the SEC to study!" he tweeted. Quarterly reporting seems like a good thing — transparency ensures informed decision-making by investors. And critics of Trump's idea have cited concerns over a lack of transparency leading to increased investor risk.

This morning President Trump directed the Security and Exchange Commission to explore extending financial reporting deadlines from three months to six. In a morning tweet, he said this suggestion came from top business leaders who told him that this “would allow greater flexibility & save money.” Indeed. But at a time when public confidence in all institutions, including business, is declining, this is exactly the wrong direction for government to go.

Do your Facebook friends offer to buy you movie tickets? One of mine did. After seeing an early screening of the movie Crazy Rich Asians, business strategist Jodi Chao made her friends an offer. “If this movie genuinely (!) wasn’t on your radar to catch while in theaters,” she typed, “I want you to go see it before Labor Day and I’d like to cover your ticket. Capping this at the first 5 of you (because I’m not a Crazy Rich Asian … yet).” I asked Jodi why she wanted people to see the movie, opening August 15 and based on the bestselling book by Kevin Kwan. From that conversation, here is my take on who should see Crazy Rich Asians.

This week several major Internet companies announced that they were taking down Infowars, Alex Jones’ inflammatory online platform. Notably absent from the list was Twitter. This is a case that is testing the core values of the major Internet providers and the practical applications of their community standards. And to date, Twitter is failing those tests.

A decade ago, a group of Internet companies, civil society organizations, academics, and investors launched the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a collaborative effort to promote free expression and protect user privacy on the Internet. Google helped lead this effort and a parallel project devoted to developing a human rights framework for the Internet. In 2010, Google further demonstrated its leadership by making a principled decision to withdraw its search-engine services from China.

In 1822, James Madison wrote that “a popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or tragedy or perhaps both.” Operating in a much simpler world, Madison and the other architects of American democracy did a brilliant job in developing a constitutional model that guarantees a free press and supports accountable government-essential elements to the provision of “popular information.”

How does the current global economic outlook compare to that of a year ago? In 2017, the world economy was undergoing a synchronized expansion, with growth accelerating in both advanced economies and emerging markets. Moreover, despite stronger growth, inflation was tame – if not falling – even in economies like the United States, where goods and labor markets were tightening.

Over the last two weeks, I have traveled to Myanmar and Bangladesh. This was my first visit back to Myanmar in more than five years. And while I am a chronic optimist, my visit offered grim confirmation of the dramatic deterioration of conditions in the country, especially for the Rohingya ethnic minority. These catastrophic conditions underscored the decline of U.S. leadership on human rights in this part of the world and globally.

This morning Microsoft President Brad Smith posted an essay on the company’s blog that raises important questions about the human rights challenges related to facial recognition technology. Microsoft, and in particular, Smith, have led the tech industry in addressing human rights issues that inevitably grow from the spreading use of emerging technologies. As Smith points out, these new technological capacities are often a force for good, but are also subject to manipulation and can cause great harm. What is clear is that these new technologies are now part of our lives and will play an ever-greater role in the future. Smith rightly focuses on vexing challenges relating to the governance of facial recognition technologies, a rapidly evolving area which requires new models in which both governments and companies assume greater responsibilities.

The claims of the Bundesbank on the European Central Bank through the Target-2 system are approaching €1tn. What do these claims represent? Are they subsidised German loans to other euro-area countries – primarily Italy, Portugal and Spain? Do they signal further financial disintegration in Europe? Or, as large as these numbers are, are they simply a consequence of the complex mechanics related to the construction of the Eurosystem and how it implements monetary operations?

There are two types of people in the United States right now: those who have heard of comedian Hannah Gadsby and those who haven’t. When people in the first group – particularly those who have seen Gadsby’s work - cross paths with people in the second group, a predictable zeal takes hold. They talk about the importance of Gadsby’s Netflix special, Nanette, to anyone who is from - or cares about people from – a marginalized group. They quote breathless pieces from Forbes.com, Rolling Stone, Salon.com, The Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair, Vulture.com and many others. Eventually, the zeal culminates with, “Trust me. Just see it.”

The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the visa ban is a piece of President Donald Trump’s broader efforts to drastically curtail immigration into the United States. A centerpiece of his “America First” agenda, Trump’s anti-immigration offensive also involves seeking to deport the so-called Dreamers and deter Central Americans from crossing the southern border by separating parents from their children. The message is clear: America is slamming the door on new immigrants, especially those coming from the global South.

The two leading financial trends of our time are the integration of digital technology and the advance of financial inclusion. The latter involves both provision of accessto those who have no account (the ‘unbanked’) and increased usageof financial services by those with a tenuous link to the formal system (the ‘underbanked’). A combination of swift technological change and government promotion is speeding the rise of inclusion.

The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council is yet another step in the administration’s retreat from the world stage. Once widely viewed as a global leader on issues like human rights, the U.S. is now a marginal player, in headlong retreat from the leadership position it has occupied since World War II.